Valenzuela-Sanchez, Andrés;
Schmidt, Benedikt R;
Azat, Claudio;
Delgado, Soledad;
Cunningham, Andrew A;
Lemaître, Jean-François;
Gaillard, Jean-Michel;
(2023)
Variable rate of ageing within species: insights from Darwin’s frogs.
Biological Journal of the Linnean Society
, 138
(1)
pp. 68-74.
10.1093/biolinnean/blac119.
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Abstract
Actuarial senescence, the increase in adult mortality risk with increasing age, is a widespread phenomenon across the animal kingdom. Although between-species variation in the rate of increase in mortality as organisms age (i.e. ageing rate) is now well documented, the occurrence of variation in ageing rate within a given species remains much more debatable. We evaluated the level of within-species variation in ageing rate in four populations of the southern Darwin’s frog (Rhinoderma darwinii) from Chile. Our results revealed strong among-population variation in ageing rates, and these were correlated with the population-specific generation time. A higher ageing rate occurred in populations where individuals exhibited a faster pace of life. Our results, along with recent studies in evolutionarily distant amphibian species, indicate that there can be substantial within-species variation in the rate of ageing, highlighting amphibians as emerging models to study the patterns and mechanisms of intraspecific variation in ageing rate.
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